


what does anybody know

by falterth



Category: Monster Hunter (Video Games)
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M, Stygian Zinogre was harmed in the making of this fic, The Ace Commander is still bitter over having to "learn" dual blades from the Ace Cadet, long sword users were harmed during the making of this fic, no real plot just a couple of dudes being soft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-05
Updated: 2019-06-05
Packaged: 2020-04-08 04:54:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,623
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19100131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/falterth/pseuds/falterth
Summary: Later that night as you’re running your hands through the Commander’s hair while he talks to you about frustrating Guild policies, you ask him, “How long did you mean when you said we should wait?”“Not to mention the hideous lack of regulation on special guild quests—wait for what?”“I’ll go, oooh look at the new weapons the Man’s designing, and you’ll go, are you thinking what I think you’re thinking, and I’ll go, yes pretty much, and you’ll sigh and walk up to the Man and ask him what materials he needs for this and then we set off hunting,” you say. “The usual.”





	what does anybody know

**Author's Note:**

> i think with every monster hunter fic i write the word count just... drops massively

“You’re joking,” the Ace Commander says, adjusting his grip on the large bag in his arms.

“Joking? No. Come on, it’ll be fun. You and me in the Arena against the fearsome Stygian Zinogre—what could go wrong?” You hip-check the door into the smithy, careful not to overbalance and drop the armful of metal scraps you’re carrying. The Commander's glare is dutifully ignored. “Or we could watch someone else go up against it. Been a while since I’ve seen how everyone’s doing.”

“Entering the competition this year? That’ll be a sight,” The Commander says, following you into the Man’s workshop. “Ah, hello—no need, we can handle this.”

“It’s for the palicoes,” you add, and the Man nods. “He’s got monster parts, I have scrap metal. Overheard you saying you needed materials. Thought we’d bring in some stuff. Gods know we don’t need all this lying around.”

“Thank you,” the Man says. His facial expression gives away little, but years of traveling together in the Caravan are good for your people-reading skills; he’s happy. “Put those down on one of the workbenches. Miss will see to them.”

You and the Commander do as told, but since you’d lacked the common sense to put your things into a container, time is wasted picking various scraps and shards of metal off the floor. You catch the Commander watching you with an amused turn to his lips.

“You will be the first to know if something good comes out of this,” the Man promises.

“We wouldn’t have it any other way,” the Commander says. “I only hope this was actually useful.”

The Man snorts and turns back to his work, a helmet made out of a collection of bones, fangs, and leather. “Come back in a few weeks. I have too much on my plate to finish anything before then.”

You give him a thumbs up, turn around to see if anything here catches your eye, but before you can get too involved in anything the Commander steps up to hurry you out the door.

“You have too many weapons,” he scolds, swatting your prying hands away from a sleek bow made of Najarala parts. “No more.”

“But it's so nice and . . . oh, fine,” you say, once the Commander’s closed the door behind the two of you and you realize you’re not getting back in there.

“And don't go back while I'm not watching, either. Remember the last time you bought a new weapon, how you just had to find every single way to upgrade it and we wasted two months searching after wyvern gems?” he asks, and you laugh sheepishly. “I’m not going through that again.”

“No one said you had—”

“Quit that. You know I’d follow you anywhere,” he says. You can’t help the besotted smile that overtakes your face. He catches sight of your expression and the corner of his mouth turns up. “Well, let’s at least wait another few weeks before doing it all over again.”

“Careful there,” you say. “Wouldn’t want me to get any great ideas. Oh! Speaking of ideas, we need to visit Sophia.”

“And why on this good earth would we do that?” he asks.

“Mm, still not over having to ‘learn’ dual blades from the Ace Cadet?” you ask. “It isn’t her fault, you know.”

The Commander heaves a sigh. “I am equally frustrated with everyone involved in this situation. Gods. I had to ask you to hunt a Rajang! Imagine what could have gone wrong.”

“It was no easy feat,” you agree. “But, well, I’m glad it was me rather than him. It wouldn't have done a thing. Sophia’s married to her work. What was that new monster she swears she’s been seeing? Something . . . a subspecies of Brachydios, I think. What was she calling it? Angry? Furious?”

“Don’t hurt yourself there,” the Commander mutters.

“What was that?” you ask. The Commander remains tactfully silent. “I thought so.”

“What _are_ we visiting the guildmarm for, though?” he asks, once the two of you have started down the street toward the quest board. “You said you didn’t want any missions for the next few weeks.”

“Can’t I visit an old friend? Haha, no, I just need her pages on the Stygian Zinogre,” you say, and hurry to explain when he shoots you a dark look. “I’ll be studying. Comparing the notes to the specimen they have in the arena.”

“And we will not be the ones fighting it, I’m sure,” the Ace Commander says, but it’s really more of a warning.

“Perish the thought,” you say gravely.

The Commander cracks a smile. “Sometimes I still wonder why you didn’t become a researcher. You and the guildmarm make for a frightening duo.”

“I am a researcher,” you insist. “I just also kill things. A lot.”

The Commander hums tunelessly, and you enjoy an easy silence for a couple of minutes. When he takes your hand and laces your fingers together with his, you let him have it.

*

“So she brought a partner,” you say neutrally.

“You _are_ allowed to do that,” the Commander says. “Not everyone’s as much of a monster as you.”

“Ha. Funny. Let’s see how it goes. If long sword over here can keep out of the enthusiastic hunter’s way, they’ll be fine,” you say, scanning the two hunters in the arena with a critical eye. “Haven’t seen him before, though.”

“The enthusiastic hunter is more of a solitary type,” the Ace Commander agrees. “Perhaps she’ll surprise us.”

You lean forward to get a better look into the preparations room. It’s difficult to parse details through the thick metal netting intended to keep possible rampaging monsters at bay—which has never worked before—but you’re fairly sure the enthusiastic hunter is arguing with her buddy.

“Her use of the hammer is exemplary, and I don’t doubt her capability,” the Commander continues, “but the current trend for hunters is to target a monster’s head regardless of their chosen weapon. Let’s hope long sword hasn’t kept up with recent fashion.”

The enthusiastic hunter bangs twice on one of the doors into the arena. Long sword heads for the other one.

“That’s our cue,” you say, and the two of you walk the ten feet or so it takes to get to the opposite side overlooking the actual arena.

The first time you saw a Stygian Zinogre it punched the breath out of your lungs, literally and figuratively.

This one, weakened enough for hunters to get it into the arena, missing the tip of its right horn and a few scales here and there, does neither of those things, but all the same a heady sense of awe fills you from the tips of your toes to the crown of your head. You lean into the Commander a bit harder than necessary.

The arena doors open—its head rises slowly, no threat, scenting the air—you see the exact moment it catches a whiff of the approaching hunters. Its red eyes fix on the enthusiastic hunter, approaching from the front. She’s walking loosely, loudly, concealing the silent opening of the door on the other end of the arena until long sword is halfway across the arena. Then they rush.

It meets them readily. The enthusiastic hunter is wearing armor made from the parts of the Zinogre’s fallen kin—a bold statement to make, but the Zinogre is angry enough that it’s growing careless.

“Look,” you say at around the ten-minute mark, Zinogre howl and dragon-crimson crackle punctuating your words, “he’s going for the head.”

“So is she,” the Ace Commander sighs.

The tip of the long sword’s blade hits the Zinogre’s jaw and catches in one of its ridges, but the force behind the blow is coming from the wrong angle and instead of piercing the beast’s scales his sword skids along the bottom of its face. The enthusiastic hunter’s hammer comes down hard on the ground in front of the long sword hunter, blue electricity crashing into the ground. It’s an aborted blow made in an attempt not to cave her companion’s skull, but he doesn’t seem to recognize it, just shoots the enthusiastic hunter an irritated look and takes up position at the Zinogre’s rear.

“ . . . so I’m not even going to comment on that,” you say, gesturing toward the mess that’s unfolding in front of you. “If he walks away from this without full use of his limbs, I think he’d deserve it. And what is he wearing, anyway? Doesn’t he know how susceptible Rathalos materials are to the dragon element?”

“Apparently not,” the Commander says. “I noticed it’s one of the old guild standard armor sets. The ones I would classify as low rank.”

“Tch. At least the enthusiastic hunter knows what she’s doing. If anything, she might tell him to go back to base,” you say. The Commander laughs. “Yeah, I thought so too.”

The enthusiastic hunter delivers a cruel uppercut to the beast’s head, and the lightning her weapon dispels arcs through its body. It staggers, affording a window of time the enthusiastic hunter uses to expertly dodge out of the way of the Zinogre’s retaliation.

You manage to tear your eyes away from the battle for a moment, riffling through your knapsack and coming up with a loose sheaf of papers. Assorted notes on the Stygian subspecies and some blank parchments to draw on.

“Hunter,” the Ace Commander says after a few minutes of tense fighting. “Did you notice the Dracophage bugs flying in?”

“What? No,” you say, looking up from your crude sketch of the Zinogre. “I’ve heard they can summon more when theirs are killed, but . . . ”

“As if you would let the fight progress that far,” the Commander says knowingly.

“ . . . yes,” you say. “I’m not sure if that’s a compliment or not.”

“A compliment, I assure you,” the Commander says. “How far away are these Dracophage bugs living? Do they respond to a Zinogre’s howl?”

“Yes, I think so, and they also respond to distress pheromones emitted by a Zinogre who thinks it’s in trouble—works the same for a regular Zinogre and Fulgurbugs,” you say. “Or we figure that might be it. There isn’t really another explanation since Zinogre don’t give obvious visual signals.”

“The long sword hunter is losing consciousness,” the Commander remarks, and you look up just in time to see the Zinogre’s broad tail slam into the hunter’s midsection and send him flying.

He doesn’t get up. When the enthusiastic hunter notices she falters for a moment but recovers quickly, letting out a loud cry that grabs the Zinogre’s attention before it can pounce on the fallen hunter. It turns, quick as a flash, leaps across the arena, paws wreathed in crackling red energy, and pins her.

The enthusiastic hunter screams in its face. The beast is surprised, you’d guess, because it recoils, just the tiniest flinch, before meeting her cry with an answering roar. Dracophage bugs swirl around its head, occasionally landing on the trapped hunter and biting her armor.

Your pencil flies across the paper.

You see, out of the corner of your eye, the arena door open, and a pair of palicoes with a wheeled stretcher dash out toward the unconscious long sword hunter, scoop him up, and wheel him back to base. He doesn’t come back for the rest of the hunt, and the enthusiastic hunter kills the Zinogre not a minute later with a swinging attack to its head. The cloud of Dracophage bugs disperses rapidly—they’re not keen on sticking around a dead protector.

In spite of her partner’s shortcomings, or perhaps because she performed so well in the face of his failure, the cheers she receives are nearly deafening. She holds one hand high in the air, fist clenched, and pounds her hammer into the ground.

You add two new pages to _Assorted notes on the Stygian subspecies_ , a page detailing the effectiveness of Dracophage bugs as possible Kinsects, and two drawings.

*

Later that night as you’re running your hands through the Commander’s hair while he talks to you about frustrating Guild policies, you ask him, “How long did you mean when you said we should wait?”

“Not to mention the hideous lack of regulation on special guild quests—wait for what?”

“I’ll go, oooh look at the new weapons the Man’s designing, and you’ll go, are you thinking what I think you’re thinking, and I’ll go, yes pretty much, and you’ll sigh and walk up to the Man and ask him what materials he needs for this and then we set off hunting,” you say. “The usual.”

“I thought you were going to say something like that,” the Ace Commander says, tapping his fingers absently on your leg, a drum pattern, one-two-three, hadn’t the Diva sung something like that in Dundorma’s Assembly?— “Tomorrow we’ll talk to the enthusiastic hunter, get her feel for the Zinogre, and then return Sophia’s notes to her.”

“Hmm. It’s not often she’s in town. I hear she’s usually traveling with the Argosy nowadays, protecting the ship when she can. And hunting when she has any free time,” you say. “A woman with dedication and heart. I respect her.”

“It’s the armor set,” the Commander says with conviction. He sits up; you briefly mourn the loss of the weight of his head on your lap. “She’s wearing Stygian armor. It’s that, isn’t it?”

“ . . . I don’t have to answer you,” you grumble.

“Gods, it’s like the Brachydios thing all over again,” he says, but you catch the fond exasperation laced through his words. “Sophia is a force of nature! Brachydios this, Brachydios that, Raging Brachydios, can we go see someone fight it in the arena, can we go see Doodle fight it in the arena—I don’t think any of us got any sleep for about a month.”

“It was fun,” you say, reaching for a pencil and a piece of paper and your clipboard.

“It was fun,” he agrees.

“Enough about this budding obsession with Zinogre,” you say. “Let’s talk about the bow I saw in the smithy.”

“The bow,” he repeats, eyes tracking you as you draw out a rough sketch of what you remember it to look like. “I’ll say it has some beautiful craftsmanship.”

“Yes!” you exclaim. “It’s amazing. The seamless transition between Najarala and the parts of its Tidal variant—breathtaking, even.”

“You want to make it,” the Commander guesses, “or buy it.”

“Buy it?” you ask. “Never. That would be a stain on my honor. Where is the work? The reward? Also, all my zenny went into armor upgrades and I don’t have any to spare.”

“Hmm. Thought so,” he says. “You don’t happen to have any Najarala parts just lying around, do you?”

“When do I ever have anything just lying around? We’ll hunt. Preparations start the day after tomorrow, and we leave in a week,” you say. The Ace Commander sighs, but leans into you as he does it.

“Then tomorrow we will also head to the Smithy and request a list of components,” he says, tapping a line on your paper once. You write it down. “Will we ever rest?”

“We’re resting now,” you say. “We can rest at any time. Do you want to rest?”

The Commander is quiet for a few moments. You set your writing materials down and take his hand. They’re rough, callused, not unlike your own, and you love tracing the lines in his palms. His fingers curl around yours for a moment before relaxing, letting you have your way with them.

“No. I’m too used to action to live without it,” he says, and you nod.

“We hunt,” you say, soft words carrying through the room. “Let’s go to bed.”

**Author's Note:**

> comments are extremely apprOH GOD A MOSQUITO


End file.
